


Strange Bird

by RJDaae



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Gen, Very AU, not sure how to tag this thing without spoiling it, pre-Leroux era, references to blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 04:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20847368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RJDaae/pseuds/RJDaae
Summary: After surviving against all the odds, a lonely wanderer is carried by a strange creature into an even stranger world, and, unexpectedly, finds his way home.





	Strange Bird

**Author's Note:**

> The most AU of the many AUs I've concocted over the years. For LittleLongHairedOutlaw's contest.

'Strange Bird'

1.

I have tried to remember the time before; to make sense of how I came to be _here_ instead of _there_.

My eyes close to yellow slits as I let the pictures and sensations flicker through my head, flashes of a half-forgotten life: the warmth of the afternoon sun shining through the boughs of a pine; the ground, cool with shadow and soft with the rot of dead leaves; the whip of twigs flying free after having been bent back by my passage; the rustlings of a hundred small creatures seeking the safety of their dens, and their mingled scents of life and death and fear and relief.

Yet, try as I might, I cannot recall the precise circumstances that led me to venture into the cave.

I knew well the dangers of those dark places. The threat of them was evident from their very entrances: wicked maws of stone, bared jaws that dripped with countless glistening fangs; how many hapless creatures had been swallowed by those hidden earth-mouths? Those who ventured inside might well make their way back out again safely, but for every successful return there were a dozen more who never again saw daylight: pinned in ever-narrowing tunnels that seemed to twine and twist like the constricting coils of a snake; choked by foul air with the taste of crushed eggs and the consistency of bog muck; tumbling into hidden fissures that plunged underfoot like claw-sharp cliffs, to be swept away by underground rivers as black and cold as a storm-flood on a moonless night. One lucky enough to be caught within earshot of the surface would profit nothing but the privilege of having company in their demise: the distressed cries would draw others down after them—some to search, some to feast, but all equally doomed within the belly of the great, gluttonous monster.

Focusing back on that day, that moment, I can still feel the chill of the stone beneath my feet, the way the walls brushed damp and rough against my sides as the passage narrowed around me. I remember feeling afraid, though whether of the cave itself or of something more immediate I cannot say for certain. My heartbeat had echoed in my head; in my throat; in the air that grew staler, closer, with every step as I felt my way farther into the dark. Perhaps I had been chased, run to ground by some foe more persistent even than my fear of the caves, pressing me to wager my life in hopes of winning it.

Perhaps, though, the fear I recall had merely been the final, reflexive survival impulse of an animal that has already resigned itself to die; the futile gasp of one whose lungs are already full of water. There is a constant that runs through my tattered memories, the very frame of the life I led before, one empty moment jointed to the next like the flesh-less bones of a spine: a sense of loneliness; a sense of endless, fruitless _searching_. Even in those days, the world had been changing. Perhaps I had been completely, truly alone; perhaps the creature that I was when crawled into the cave that day had finally made peace with that fact. Nature has never had much sympathy for her failed experiments. What better could an obsolete and solitary thing hope for than a painless sleeping-death in some dark and peaceful hole?

It doesn't matter now how I got there, no more than it did then: as I reached the end of the tunnel, my body twisting within the narrow cavity of unyielding stone, I knew that I had carried myself to the place where my bones would lie. My mouth fell open, fighting for each breath as the thickened air flexed its cloying claws into the depths of my lungs; soon, my mind was prised free, fading thoughts siphoned off to melt into the painless shadows, and I felt almost grateful for it.

Never would any hope of _awakening_ have crossed my mind.


End file.
